Murphy’s Law

I thought I’ve always used the expression “Murphy’s Law” correctly, but now a native English speaker cast doubt on my usage. This happens a lot with me. I thought I had been using certain terms correctly for years, and one day, someone tells me that it’s wrong. I correct it, then years later, someone else corrects me again.

The context I used “Murphy’s Law” was this:

In buying more storage space for a computer server, I said the Murphy’s Law is this: Whatever the amount of space you provide, that’s how much people end up using it, because most people are too lazy to properly back up files and delete them off the server. So, the bigger is not always the better. If you provide too much space, you’ll end up with unmanageable amount of data to back up properly.

There are certain phenomena in life where things naturally incline towards the worst case scenario. File storage is one such case. If no one puts pressures on people to back up and delete, the servers usually get full no matter how big it is. Is this a wrong use of “Murphy’s Law”?

Comments

Funny... every time I rethink your question, I flip flop on my answer. My gut tells me it IS an incorrect usage but I cannot pin down why. Murphy basically said "whatever can go wrong will." I think we don't usually apply that to human nature, maybe, but to things that happen to people. I am in a hurry to get somewhere and traffic is bad, the drawbridge opens unexpectedly, and my car overheats. Murphy's law. My boss makes me work late which is why I am in hurry which he always does on days I have to be somewhere after work. Not Murphy's law.

Murphy's Law, as I understand it, is something that you can't control, not something resulting from a choice you make. In the case you mention it is your decision to increase or not, it is not something that happens by "nature".It's not just inclining towards the worst case scenario, it's a worst case scenario beyond human control...

The second case mentioned by janet is more "Boss Law" than Murphy's Law

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Your use of the definite article is incorrect. "Murphy's Law"" is equivalent to "the Law of Murphy", therefore "the Murphy's Law" contains an implicit reduncancy, since it would be equivalent to "the the Law of Murphy".